‘For-profit care may impact on nation’s health’

A LEADING hospital consultant has said the Government is wasting money on a ‘for-profit’ healthcare system while the public health sector is languishing because of inadequate funding.

Dr Orla Hardiman, a consultant neurologist at Beaumont Hospital, in Dublin, said the Government was throwing tax incentives into profit-making health schemes in a swing towards for-profit healthcare that could negatively impact on the population’s general health.

She said for-profit healthcare would not fix the problems that exist in the public health sector and that the move to for-profit meant the public sector’s urgent need for targeted funding to address the lack of clinical staff and essential equipment was being neglected.